Really?
I can’t imagine what would be proprietary about it. There is no witchcraft involved in alloy steels or heat treating.
Years ago, I built a cylinder for an N frame Smith & Wesson to make what amounted to a 45 magnum. This was back in the “post Dirty Harry Days”.
I wanted to know what Smith machined their cylinders from, but was told to go take a hike when I inquired to their manufacturing department.
So, I took the Model 29 cylinder that I was going to replace over to Southwest Labs and had a complete chemical and mechanic left properties evaluation performed. Keep in mind, this was considered destructive testing.
it turned out to be within the chemical if 4140 with a RC hardness of 34.
I decided on a piece of premium aircraft quality 4340, normalized, annealed, rough machined, then hardenned and tempered to the same 34 RC.
I did the same thing to a barrel back in 2004. A new barrel maker was touting his “special” stainless. He would not disclose what was so special about it. So I bought one and sent the drop over to the Lab had a complete work up done. It turned out to be the same 416R that everybody else used. In fact, by doing a material trace through one of our suppliers, I even found out where he was getting his bars from.
He wrote me a really nasty letter telling me to cease. I Didn’t.
so when someone tells me something that perhaps makes me raise an eyebrow, I am just crazy enough to say, “Ok, I will find out for myself”.
by the way, here is a picture of my “45 S&W Magnum”
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